Conservation Notes: Lee Zeldin’s EPA

What’s Happening at the Environmental Protection Administration?

by Tom Molloy

Buried in the avalanche of regular news on the environmental degradation wrought by the Trump regime is the story of the how the Environmental Protection Administration has been cancelling safety regulations, supporting coal production and stopped caring about manmade climate change in a summer where we are seeing thousands of people die in unprecedented heatwaves in Europe alone.

The job of the E.P.A. chief is: “to protect human health by safeguarding the air we breathe, the water we drink and land that grows our food,” as the agency’s founding charter puts it. President Nixon appointed William Ruckelshaus to run the newly formed EPA. “It will be our job in the Environmental Protection Agency to be an advocate for the environment wherever decisions about our common future are made, whether it be in the councils of government, in the boardrooms of industry, or the living rooms of our citizens,” Ruckelshaus said a few weeks later.

Lee Zeldin, though, focusses more on supporting industry and exporting fossil fuels than on protecting the environment. A New York Times analysis of thousands of public communications by E.P.A. administrators, dating back three decades, shows that Mr. Zeldin has shifted the agency’s mission to reflect President Trump’s desire to maximize economic development and industrial activity while downplaying environmental consequences.

Despite noting the E.P.A.’s core responsibility to ensure clean air and clean water, Mr. Zeldin is a champion of deregulation and cutting red tape. The NYT reports that he is the first agency head to talk about the economy more than pollution and American energy more than public health. They report that he rarely mentions protecting children from environmental harms but talks frequently about protecting businesses and consumers from regulations.

He speaks of fossil fuels in a positive light, routinely expounding on Trump’s phrase “clean, beautiful coal.” The President has called Mr. Zeldin “our secret weapon,” whom he counts on to get permits approved speedily. Carolyn Holran, an E.P.A. spokeswoman, said: “We are delivering results, ensuring America has the cleanest air, land, and water in the world while simultaneously helping to grow the economy.”

Critics, including former Republican E.P.A. administrators, said Mr. Zeldin is turning the agency into one they no longer recognize, prioritizing industry at the expense of public health and community safety.

The New Yorker reports that Lee Zeldin has packed EPA’s upper echelons with former industry lobbyists and ditched a list of rules that industry had objected to, including regulations to reduce American’s exposure to arsenic, mercury, and PM2.5 (a very fine soot that is linked to asthma and lung disease). Soon after his Senate confirmation, Mr. Zeldin laid out an agenda to “unleash energy dominance, bring back American auto jobs, pursue permitting reform and make America the AI capital of the world.”

He announced the “greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history,” a plan to repeal or weaken some two dozen environmental protections that, he said, were “throttling the oil and gas industry” or had “shut down opportunities for American manufacturing.” The NYT reports that Mr. Zeldin has overseen an unraveling of climate change protections and enabled coal, steel, chemical plants and mines to bypass environmental rules by sending an email requesting an exemption.

President Richard M. Nixon established the E.P.A. in 1970 in response to public outrage over catastrophic oil spills, deadly air pollution and industrial waste setting rivers aflame. Its first administrator said that the agency would have “no obligation to promote agriculture or commerce; only the critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment.” Instead, the agency under Mr. Zeldin has eliminated greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles, which repeal is estimated to save the auto industry 54 billion dollars, but the industry has lost jobs since Mr. Trump took office. The E.P.A. has also delayed standards that aimed to limit leaching of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury into water supplies from coal-ash dump sites; proposed ending greenhouse gas limits on coal and gas-fired power plants; and loosened methane standards.

“The war on beautiful clean coal is OVER!,” Mr. Zeldin wrote on X last year. “No longer will the U.S. be trying to regulate coal out of existence. This moment calls for more U.S. energy more jobs and less cost and we are so ready to meet this moment!”

He has criticized renewable energy as insufficient to meet the intense appetite of artificial intelligence data centers. “Natural gas nuclear coal etc. can’t be held back, shouldn’t be held back, and at the Trump EPA WON’T BE HELD BACK!,” Mr. Zeldin wrote.

Christine Todd Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey who led the E.P.A. under President George W. Bush said: “It’s just staggering how far outside the parameters of what the agency is about he has taken it.” “He is completely undoing the mission of the E.P.A.” Science and Scientists tell us that emissions from burning fossil fuels are the leading driver of climate change, which scientists say is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme heatwaves and heavy precipitation, melting the world’s glaciers and ice sheets, and heightening the risk of severe wildfires. Mr. Trump, calls climate change a “hoax.”

Mr. Zeldin rarely mentions climate change, other than to criticize climate “zealots” and to boast of repealing greenhouse gas regulations, as well as E.P.A.’s authority to fight global warming. The New Yorker reports that he called worries about global warming “a religion” and efforts to combat it a “scam”.

A Brookings Institute analysis shows that during Trump’s first term, a sixth of the deregulatory efforts were blocked by the courts, another sixth were blocked in part, and the remainder were still in the courts at the end of the term. William K. Reilly, former EPA administrator says: “it will take a while for the courts to catch up. And by the time they do, the scientists, lawyers, the engineers, they will have gone somewhere else.” Zelden has cut the agency staff by 25%.

Mr. Zeldin has taken specific steps to safeguard air and water. This month he announced that the agency would curb microplastics and pharmaceuticals in drinking water for millions of Americans. He signed an agreement with Mexico to address a sewage crisis in the Tijuana River and led a 28-day cleanup of hazardous material last year after wildfires tore through Los Angeles. His list of 500 “environmental wins” includes removing contamination at industrial sites in Maine, Boston and Florida.

In a recent interview, he said the Trump administration just wants to get back to basics. “For us here at E.P.A., it’s protecting human health and the environment, which we know we could do while also growing the economy,” Mr. Zeldin said.

The New Yorker reports that last summer more than 150 staff members at the EPA sent a letter to their leader, Lee Zeldin, outlining their concerns which included, among other things, using official communications to trash Democrats, gutting EPA’s research division, and ignoring findings of its scientists. The EPA soon after announced that it was placing 144 of the signatories on administrative leave. 

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So where does all this leave us? What can you do? You can get out the vote (i.e.: postcard campaigns, and/or give to campaigns needing our support to provide hope to flip the House and/or Senate. Give to the many organizations fighting these battles in the courts. (Contact me if you want recommendations). As Alexie Navany said: “It is not shameful to do something small, it is shameful to do nothing.”